1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for burning MAC(Media Access Control) addresses to network cards, and more particularly to a method for burning MAC addresses to network cards during motherboard manufacturing process.
2. Description of the Related Art
A computer accesses LAN (Local Area Network) needs to use a network card which has a MAC (Media Access Control) address corresponding to itself. The MAC address is a physical symbol (hardware address) of a computer or a network device being connected to the LAN. The computer or the network device can be identified through the MAC address. When a computer is connected to the internet through LAN, it uses an IP address to receive data from the internet. When the data accesses the LAN, the IP address is transformed to a corresponding MAC address for the data to identify the position of the computer in the LAN. So the computer can receive the data successfully.
The MAC address is a 48 bits binary number. It is formed with 12 hexadecimal numbers, and corresponding to the network card one by one. Network card manufacturers need to burn the MAC address to an EPROM of the network card during the manufacturing process. Nowadays, most of the network cards are integrated on motherboards. During the motherboard manufacturing process, the manufacturers also need to burn the MAC addresses to the network cards which has being integrated on the motherboards. The most common way is to use a motherboard test machine which has a burning function to burn the MAC addresses to the network cards during the testing step of motherboard manufacturing process. However, this kind of burning method will extend the time of testing step. Because the motherboard manufacturing process is a running work, the time extending of the testing step will cause the time of each step of the motherboard manufacturing process unbalance. Moreover, the test machine doesn't have the function of valuating the correctness of the MAC addresses. If the burning step is fail, it may affect the following steps.
Thus, an improved method for burning MAC addresses to network cards is desired.